Tell us about your creative process, what drives your practice?

I equate my creative process to a feedback loop that involves the physical process of making as a way of understanding my unique and diverse cultural heritage, social identity and the liminal spaces that I inhabit.

This investigation has been the driving force of my practice for some time and my creative practice is a reflection of that growing understanding and integration of these disparate aspects of self in my life. The work I make documents a journey of personal discovery and self awareness of the forces that have shaped my understanding of the world.

My work documents and narrates an ongoing theme of uncovering and exploring a multi-cultural heritage and hybridity from a contemporary perspective.

Can you tell us more about the idea of ‘hybrid hyphenations’ and how you fuse this into your practice?

I started using the term hybrid hyphenations during my honours research and this relates to the idea of existing in multiple cultural and social spaces simultaneously, and how I negotiate these areas within my life. I am a first generation Australian with Armenian cultural heritage, and Dutch ancestry.

Hybrid Hyphenation refers to my background as well as the conceptual framework surrounding my practice and the physical processes I work with…

It documents an ongoing journey, a search for identity and belonging from a multicultural perspective that crosses generations and encompasses the diasporic experience. The work I produce illustrates this complex heritage through a multi disciplinary practice and it explores the combination of materials and processes as a reference to the hybrid identity.

Borders are violently made. What is together is rendered apart. Metaphorically speaking, I exist in the borderlands; I spend my time sifting through this debris. I take the pieces I find that I recognise and I fit them together in the present sense.

Somehow they never have lost their inherent pattern. As I piece these fragments back together I discover “what they once were” still has a presence and is still recognisable – despite being reconfigured irrationally, I can still make sense out of the chaos.

“Let this be internalised:

I am not being eliminated

or erased

because I resist

everyday

the eradication of my self

upon contact with others

who do not recognize me.”

ON REFUSING TO BE A BORDER BY BAՎAKAN

You have quite a multi-faceted approach to printmaking, working with highly graphic illustrations but also playing with the sculptural possibilities of the substrate (paper). What has drawn you to work with 3D forms like artist books when creating your prints?

I began my creative career as a graphic designer in print media, pre-computers in the early 90s and this training still strongly informs my work today. I have a fascination with graphic forms and simplification of shapes as a form of personal symbology. I utilise and combine both digital and analog print processes within my work. Pattern making, repetition, ritual and reflection have become for me a language I use within all my work. This creation of personal symbology has become my vehicle for the act of cultural remembrance.

Although I am primarily a printmaker, I work across multiple mediums depending on what the work dictates and using paper and print media in a sculptural way has become a way for me to work with craft and cultural practices. Recent explorations in weaving hand and digitally printed paper is a reflection of the exquisite skills of the carpet weavers of my Armenian cultural heritage. The conceptual practice of weaving paper is about bringing together the disparate parts of my cultural identity.

I was fortunate enough to spend 6 months studying at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn NYC in 2006. During my time there I did a book binding and artists book unit which expanded my practice in this form and I have been experimenting with book forms ever since. The making of artists’ books allows the viewer a sense of intimacy and personal reflection with the ideas and images I use in my work. These forms of making allow for a narrative of the prints to unfold and I am able to use prints and printed ephemera that otherwise may not necessarily work as a ‘work on a wall’. The use of repetition, rhythm and image as text creates a more fluid reading of the prints that I make.

Are there any female printmakers | artists that influence you?

I am immensely inspired by so many wonderful female identifying artists and printmakers. I am particularly drawn to artists that share a commonality, using their creative practice to investigate issues around cultural heritage and how this translates through generations of dislocation as well as the expression of culture in a contemporary form. Currently I am loving the work of US textile artist Emma Welty who works with weaving and lace techniques to explore her Armenian heritage.

Other significant inspirations and influences include the work of artists such as, Nicole Barakat, Nadia Hernández, Jazmina Cininas, Raquel Ormella, Rona Green, Megan Cope and Amy Sands (US).

Finally, what exciting projects are you working on at the moment?

I am currently working on a body of work for a solo show at Lismore Regional Gallery in January. I have been working across a number of print processes and paper sculptures (woven printed paper rugs) as well as collaborating with artist Beki Davies on ceramic forms that are inspired by a series of screen prints and decorated using screen print techniques and hand painted elements. The show will also feature relief prints and Armenian needle lace and laser cut acrylic experimental forms.